According to Sicko, almost fifty million Americans are uninsured while the remainder, who are covered, are often victims of insurance company fraud and red tape. Furthermore, Sicko points out that the U.S. health care system is ranked 37 out of 191 by the World Health Organization with certain health measures, such as infant mortality and life expectancy, equal to countries with much less economic wealth. Interviews are conducted with people who thought they had adequate coverage but were denied care. Former employees of insurance companies describe cost-cutting initiatives that give bonuses to insurance company physicians and others to find reasons for the company to avoid meeting the cost of medically necessary treatments for policy holders, and thus increase company profitability.

Chronicling the rise of McDonald's fast food empire, The Founder tells the true story of how Illinois salesman Ray Kroc met brothers Mac and Dick McDonald, who were operating a hamburger restaurant in southern California in the 1950s. Kroc subtly maneuvered himself into a position to take control of their company, which grew into one of the world's best-known brands after he bought the chain for $2.7 million in 1961.

The film begins with a series of security footages of armed bank robberies (one of the robbers was on a crutch) accompanied by the song Louie, Louie. Moore then uses an Encyclopædia Britannica archive video to compare and view modern-day America with the Roman Empire, by juxtaposing depictions of the fall of the Roman Empire with similar modern-day American issues. The film then depicts home videos of families being evicted from their homes, as well as the "Condo Vultures," a Florida real estate agency whose business flourished with the increasing number of foreclosures.

The documentary is split into five parts. It begins by examining how Iceland was highly deregulated in 2000 and the privatization of its banks. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and AIG collapsed, Iceland and the rest of the world went into a global recession.

Michael Moore begins by introducing himself and his family through 8 mm archival home movies; he describes himself as the Irish American Catholic middle-class son of a General Motors employee assembling AC spark plugs. Moore chronicles how GM had previously defined his childhood in Flint, Michigan, and how the company was the primary economic and social hub of the town. He points out that Flint is the place where the Flint Sit-Down Strike occurred, resulting in the birth of the United Auto Workers. He reveals that his heroes were the Flint natives who had escaped the oppressive life in GM's factories, including "Flint's most famous native son," game show host Bob Eubanks.

A NASA spacecraft has landed on an unknown planet and begins to take rock and soil samples. Four aliens discover it and are sucked up through its vacuum, after which it makes its way back to Earth. The aliens are able to escape from a military base by using their powers (with which they can destroy or heal anything they touch). During the escape, the youngest one hides in a passing van, occupied by a wheelchair-bound boy named Eric Cruise, his older brother, Michael, and their single mother, Janet, who are moving to California from Illinois.

The film begins with a profile of Kenneth Lay, who founded Enron in 1985. Two years after its founding, the company becomes embroiled in scandal after two traders begin betting on the oil markets, resulting in suspiciously consistent profits. One of the traders, Louis Borget, is also discovered to be diverting company money to offshore accounts. After auditors uncover their schemes, Lay encourages them to "keep making us millions". However, the traders are fired after it is revealed that they gambled away Enron's reserves; the company is narrowly saved from bankruptcy by the timely intervention of executive Mike Muckleroy, who managed to bluff the market long enough to recover Borget's trading losses and prevent a margin call. After these facts are brought to light, Lay denies having any knowledge of wrongdoing.

The documentary shows the development of the contemporary business corporation, from a legal entity that originated as a government-chartered institution meant to affect specific public functions to the rise of the modern commercial institution entitled to most of the legal rights of a person. The documentary concentrates mostly upon North American corporations, especially those in the United States. One theme is its assessment of corporations as persons, as a result of an 1886 case in the United States Supreme Court in which a statement by Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite led to corporations as "persons" having the same rights as human beings, based on the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.